The Receiving Room

The first autumn leaves clicked along the asphalt like skittering beetles. Wind howled through the oaks and up the hill on Moods Road. It almost seemed to be saying something. My mother stood on the porch of the old house, waving me forward with a ring of keys.

She’d told me to bring my tools.

“What’s broken?”

“The front door at the Moods Road house.”

“Why are you going there?”

“We rented it.”

“Ma. Ghosts aren’t real.”

“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

In Bellwether, renting the old Haunted House on Moods Road was the small-town equivalent of getting into a shark cage. Even the teenagers left that place alone.

My mother, Edna, was sixty-four. She split her own firewood, had fired a rifle over the head of a man stealing her generator, and once locked a Ford salesman in the F-150 he was showing her after he climbed into the back to demonstrate the legroom. She left the keys in the sales office and drove home.

She’d raised three boys alone. Our father left when I was seven. The men who followed rarely stayed long, although several left belongings she eventually made me take to the dump.

She was better with strays. Cats, dogs, somebody’s cousin who needed a week to get straightened out. There was usually an extra person at dinner and something with fleas in the laundry room. And Edna would make it her personal mission to whip them both into shape inside a week.

I’d inherited that much. People called when they needed a couch, a ride, somewhere to put their things. I’d slept in my truck twice since high school. You remembered who answered. And who didn’t. You remember what it’s like to be lost and alone.

***

I worked at a millwork shop outside Bellwether, Connecticut, building cabinets for people who had more bathrooms than relatives. That Friday, a designer rejected six pantry doors because the grain felt busy. I’d spent two days matching it.

I’d been at the same shop since nineteen. Work, groceries, Edna’s repairs. Football and a dive bar on Sundays with the same crew from work. Thursday nights out with the guys if the week’s orders were finished. I kept meaning to do something else with my life—something that mattered—although I couldn’t have said what.

My life was like an old record, stuck in a groove, on repeat, that had been skipping along in that one groove for so long that the vinyl was fraying and strange sounds were starting to fill the space between the notes. This couldn’t go on much longer.

But there were more persistent disasters afoot. For weeks now, my mother spent every evening ghost hunting. She was on a ghost hunting binge which had to be worthy of a Guinness World Record.

It all started with a séance for Ruth’s husband. They got a photograph of a man behind her chair, all the color bleached out of him. The wallpaper showed through his neck.

“That isn’t Walter,” Ruth said.

Apparently, this warranted further investigation.

Ruth was a widow. Donna had divorced the same man twice. Bev still had her husband, although he spent most of his time in the garage. Lately, my mother was always with them. Her kitchen table disappeared beneath cemetery maps and charging cables.

I thought Mom was getting carried away.

She thought I needed to get out more. She said, “Ghosts are real, Billy.” She said it repeatedly.

Let me tell you, of all people on God’s green Earth, my mother was the last one to get caught up in some superstitious lunacy. Unless there was something to it. Which is what freaked me out.

So, I had to go along with it. Just out of morbid curiosity. And concern.

***

Bellwether’s lawns were still green, but the trees above them were black and nearly bare. The sky had settled into a permanent gray. There were splinters of light in the mornings, that faded after sunup. It was the graying season. And a pall hung over the winding roads of these old towns. Pumpkins grinned from stone walls. A sprinkler ticked across grass already slick with rain.

Moods stood beyond the last streetlight. Its gables crowded together above the porch. Loose boards trembled beneath my feet, carrying the movement into my legs.

My mother handed me the key, then knocked on the hood of her Subaru.

“You don’t own a cat.”

“I’d like to keep it that way.”

Three cats had crawled into engine compartments on Greely Street that week. That morning, Cornelius, the golden retriever who carried his own leash down Main Street, had fallen dead outside the bakery.

His owner was still holding the other end when someone came out with his biscuit.

***

The doorknob was cold to the touch. A draft came from inside.

Once we crossed the threshold, the wind disappeared. My mother’s keys rattled, and somewhere deep in the house the sound seemed to rattle back.

Ruth had sandwiches. Bev was fastening a camera to her chest. Donna had arranged batteries beneath a sheet of instructions.

Stay with your partner.

Do not invite anything to follow you.

If you hear your name, find the person calling before you answer.

And whatever you do, do not insult the spirits.

“You wrote these?”

“Read them,” Donna said.

My mother pointed to the door.

The latch was out by a quarter inch. I knelt beside it while they discussed Briar Glen. Four women from the memory-care wing had died in nine days.

Little pools of light passed through the trees and into the foyer. Shadows moved along the ceilings. The house hitched in the wind, creaking, like it was whining over the horrors that clung to its walls.

I kept my eyes on the screws.

I’d heard about those women already.

***

The previous Thursday, I drove two guys from the shop to a men’s club off the interstate to watch the game. By eleven, I had indigestion and couldn’t stand the music.

Outside, the bass thudded through the brick. A red sign flickered above the parking lot. Beyond the fence, dead cornstalks scraped together.

A woman knocked on my passenger window, startling me.

“Can I sit in here? My ride’s late.”

Her name was Lilly. She wore a puffer coat over something silver and had a rose tattoo across one hand.

“You work in there?”

“No, I dress like this for myself.”

I turned up the heat.

When I mentioned Bellwether, she asked about the cats. Then Briar Glen. Her grandmother had left her a book describing something similar.

“What kind of book?”

“Witchcraft. I’m a sorcerer. Well, a sorceress, really.”

“Witchcraft?”

“Sorcery, mostly.”

“That’s your side hustle?”

“When I have time.”

According to the book, some ghosts stayed so long they forgot who they’d been. A few were given work escorting other lost souls out. Reapers, she called them.

Sometimes they couldn’t find their assignment. Eventually, they forgot whom they were looking for and started taking whoever they ran into. Living or dead.

“Where do they take them?”

“They don’t know.”

“Ghosts aren’t real, Lilly.”

She looked at the heater controls.

“You always this sure about things?”

A mirror could make one recognize itself briefly, she continued. Its original name might hold that recognition.

I suggested mirrored walls, a door at either end. Something like a vestibule.

“You build a room around it?”

“You lead it in.”

She laughed.

“Don’t go inviting things to come after you. That’s first day shit in sorcery school.”

She put her number in my phone before her ride arrived.

The next morning, the guys asked whether I’d got anywhere.

“She thinks she’s a witch.”

“So?”

“Little strange for me.”

“Bro. She gave you her number.”

***

“Bill?”

It sounded like my mother, but all the air had been sucked from her lungs. The word came out hoarse and dry.

“What?”

I dropped the drill bit and groped for it.

“Bill!”

Floorboards creaked. I looked up at the closed door beneath the stairs.

“If you need something, come here. I’m working.”

Donna appeared in the parlor doorway.

“Who are you talking to?”

“My mother.”

“She’s with us.”

I waited for laughter.

The cellar latch lifted, then settled.

“Don’t do that again,” Donna said.

“Then stop calling me.”

***

“That’ll split.”

A man stood beside the newel post.

“I’m drilling a pilot hole.”

“Good.”

He wore a cardigan and had the mildly disappointed expression of someone waiting for a contractor.

I could see the banister through his chest. Although he stood six feet away, his voice came from beside my ear.

My stomach dropped. My forehead dampened.

“Ma?”

She came out.

“You see him?”

“Yes.”

The man started to offer his hand, then lowered it.

“Stanley.”

“Ghosts are real.”

My mother looked at me.

“Put the screwdriver down, Bill. Come meet our friends.”

I had so many questions.

***

Three of them sat in the parlor.

Stanley had been a building inspector. Marge wore a waitress’s uniform. Leonard held a hat on his knees.

Six chairs stood around the boarded fireplace. The empty ones faced the door.

They came because they could see one another here. Elsewhere, Marge sometimes went weeks without anyone looking back at her.

They discussed why they remained. Whether they were supposed to do something.

Leonard had waited for his wife. She’d died, but she hadn’t come there.

“I thought someone would tell you,” he said.

Ruth leaned toward him.

“How long were you married?”

“Forty-three years.”

“Forty-one for us.”

My mother pulled out a chair for me.

I sat. Fucking hell. Ghosts are real!

Outside, branches moved against the windows without making a sound. I found myself watching the empty chairs.

“Who else comes?”

Marge glanced at Stanley.

The floor began to groan.

The air felt still. Something sweet and rotten hung in it.

Decay.

There was movement behind the fireplace. Behind the walls.

Leonard put on his hat.

“We should finish.”

The cellar door was open.

A man in a dark coat stood beside my toolbox. White dust filled the creases of his hands.

He looked at me.

“You called.”

Ruth began to rise, and Edna caught her wrist. The man’s mouth opened too far. The smell grew strong enough to taste.

Stanley pressed against the wall.

“Go.”

My mother shoved me toward the kitchen.

***

Outside, I could see a woman across the road setting a table. I wanted to knock on her door. Ask to use the phone. Get us inside a normal house.

Instead, I called Lilly.

She arrived in scrubs.

“Veterinary office,” she said. “Other job.”

When I repeated what I’d said to the voice, she looked toward the house.

“Lilly. Ghosts are real…” I began.

“I told you,” she said, like we were discussing a disputed current event, not like… you know… ghosts being real.

“You told it to come to you.”

“I thought it was my mother.”

“You can’t ignore these warnings, Bill. You’ll end up dead. Or worse.”

“Wait. There’s something worse?”

Donna’s notebook identified it as Ed Greely. They’d heard Ed on a recording. Bev had supplied Greely because of the street.

Lilly crossed out the surname.

My mother took out the keys.

“Those people are still in there.”

I put my hand over hers.

“I know.”

For once, I understood why she wanted to go back.

***

The historical society kept its records in the old firehouse. My mother knew who had the key.

We found Edwin Moods beside a cornerstone in a photograph. He’d built the firehouse, the jail, the police station, and most of town hall.

Same face. Same hands.

An unidentified fever killed his wife and five children in November 1908.

Then came the mediums, the ceremonies, the sale of his company. The newspapers followed his ruin with the same enthusiasm they’d once given his success.

In 1912, a neighbor found him beside the fireplace. He’d been burning cuttings about the deaths and his financial troubles. The furniture was gone. Foreclosure was pending.

Exposure, the report said. Severe malnutrition. Mutilation.

My mother studied the family photograph.

“Didn’t anybody go over there?”

Under the clippings were Edwin’s drawings. The vestibule was marked RECEIVING ROOM.

Lilly leaned over my shoulder.

“A mirror won’t stop him passing through a wall.”

“But he’ll look.”

“Hopefully. Get him to remember himself. Maybe he’ll remember how to leave.”

“Then I need to keep the mirrors where he can see them.”

She nodded.

I kept my finger on the drawing.

“You’ll stay?”

“Of course I’ll stay.”

***

Stanley met us at the side entrance. Two fingers were missing from his left hand.

Leonard was gone.

Marge stood beside the fireplace holding his hat.

While we’d been reading newspapers, he’d been sitting there waiting for us.

I unloaded the truck.

We used mirrored wardrobe doors from a renovation, plywood, and my mother’s bedroom mirror. Bev brought one shaped like a sun. I left it outside.

Stanley showed me where the framing was sound. The women carried things and held lights.

Every mirror caught another part of the house. The stairs. The cellar door. A stretch of hall that seemed longer in the glass.

I stopped looking unless I had to.

Sawdust stuck to the sweat beneath my collar. When the drill stopped, something dragged across the floor overhead.

My mother’s flashlight shook.

“You cold?”

“Just finish.”

I’d seen her hold a rifle steadier.

Lilly steadied a panel while I fastened it. I started to tell her I had it, then let her hold the weight.

When the doors worked, she put the photograph and drawing on the porch.

My mother waited by the back entrance.

“Don’t stand there trying to be brave. Get through the door.”

I nodded.

“I mean it.”

***

The recorders started at nearly eight.

Ruth asking for Walter. Donna asking whether anybody was present. Bev counting into a microphone.

Then silence.

“Bill?”

My mother’s voice, behind me.

I almost answered.

The sound came from the cellar.

“Bill, help me.”

I’d watched her go to the back entrance. Still, my body turned before I could stop it.

Edwin stood in the doorway.

He came toward me, his coat brushing the wall. Something beneath it made a dry, rustling sound.

I backed into the receiving room.

The mirrors caught him from every side. He hesitated, then reached for me.

His fingers passed through my shirt. Cold spread beneath my ribs. I tried to breathe and heard a thin whistle.

Lilly caught my arm from the porch.

My shoulder struck the jamb. For a moment, I felt myself being pulled apart.

Then his grip loosened.

I fell outside.

She slammed the door. I pulled the rope, closing the inner one.

Something hit the glass.

“Edwin Moods,” Lilly said.

A mirror cracked. I braced the door.

“Edwin. Look.”

A screw squealed in the wood.

Then the pressure stopped.

Through the small window, I saw him turning his hands over.

Lilly held up the photograph.

“Alice?”

“Yes.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know.”

His face tightened. The door pushed against me again.

I raised the drawing.

“You built this room.”

He studied it, then looked at the door.

“It opens the wrong way.”

“I changed it.”

“Why?”

“To keep you here long enough to talk.”

He looked around at the mirrors.

“You called me.”

“I thought you were somebody else.”

After a while, he sat down.

***

We spoke through the door.

He remembered Alice washing the baby. A boy who stole his pencils. He couldn’t remember which boy.

When we asked about his work, he searched his coat.

“There was somebody I had to find.”

“Who?”

“I had the name.”

He kept searching.

My mother came onto the porch with Stanley and Marge.

“Where’s Leonard?” Marge asked.

Edwin looked at the hat.

“I don’t know.”

“You took him.”

He covered his face.

Nobody comforted him.

I had expected finding the name to fix him. Now he sat on the floor of a house he’d built, unable to account for what he’d done.

I lowered the drawing.

We waited.

Eventually, he stood and felt along a mirror’s edge, his fingers moving as though finding a latch in the dark.

A narrow opening appeared.

Beyond it was a dim passage.

“Do you know where that goes?” Lilly asked.

He shook his head.

Marge looked at Stanley. He held out his damaged hand.

She tucked Leonard’s hat beneath her arm, and they went through together.

Edwin paused.

I wanted to ask about the others. Whether his family might be there. But he was already stepping into the opening, and I was afraid that if I called him back, he would come.

The glass showed my face.

***

We stayed until morning.

Ruth put the chairs against the wall. Donna packed the recorders. My mother made coffee.

Lilly sat beside me on the porch.

“You should get your chest checked.”

“I will.”

“Today.”

I nodded.

Across the road, a man came out for his newspaper. Before starting his car, he knocked on the hood.

Inside, I began taking down the mirrors.

“Bill?”

My mother’s voice came from the kitchen.

I put down the drill and walked through the hall.

She stood at the counter. Her coat was still on. There was plaster dust in her hair.

“I asked if you wanted breakfast.”

She glanced toward the receiving room.

“We’ll go somewhere.”

Lilly was by the front door, checking her phone.

“You coming?” I asked.

She put her phone away.

I’d never been good at keeping people or letting the ones I held close get too far away.

I carried the tools out and made room on the passenger seat. There were receipts, a sweatshirt, things I’d been driving around with for months.

My mother watched from beside her Subaru.

Lilly got in and said, “What now?”

“Ghosts are real,” I said.

“And?”

“Then everything’s up for grabs, isn’t it?”